| Mozilla Firefox History | |
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Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross began working on the Firefox project as an experimental branch of the Mozilla project. They believed that the commercial requirements of Netscape's sponsorship and developer-driven feature creep compromised the utility of the Mozilla browser. To combat what they saw as the Mozilla Suite's software bloat, they created a pared-down browser, with which they intended to replace the Mozilla Suite. On April 3, 2003, The Mozilla Foundation announced that they planned to change their focus from the Mozilla Suite to Firefox and Thunderbird. The Firefox project has gone through many name changes through its history. Originally titled Phoenix, it had to be renamed because of trademark issues Phoenix Technologies. The replacement name, Firebird, provoked mixed reactions, particularly since the free database software Firebird uses the same name. In late April 2003, the Mozilla Foundation stated that the browser should always bear the name Mozilla Firebird in order to avoid confusion with the database software. However, continuing pressure from the FLOSS community forced another change, and on February 9, 2004, Mozilla Firebird became Mozilla Firefox (or Firefox for short). The Firefox project went through many versions before 1.0 was released on November 9, 2004. Aside from stability and security fixes, the Mozilla Foundation has as of October 2006 released one major update to Firefox - 1.5 on November 29, 2005. Future development According to the roadmap, future Firefox development will include version 2.0 and version 3.0. Development for version 2.0 will occur on the Gecko 1.8 branch from which version 1.5 was released, with the release starting the Gecko 1.8.1 branch, while development on version 3.0, which will be based on Gecko 1.9, occurs simultaneously on the Mozilla trunk. Mozilla is developing versions 2.0 and 3.0 simultaneously in order to ship front-end innovation in version 2.0 built on a more stable back-end, while completing major architectural and user interface changes for version 3.0. Goals for Firefox include changes to the tabbed browsing environment, enhancements to the extensions manager, enhancements to the GUI, improvements to the find, search and software update engines; a greater level of accessibility, session and download restore, and new improved Anti-phishing features. Newer versions of Firefox will use Cairo as the rendering layer instead of GDI+. Mozilla Firefox 1.5 and future releases of Camino will also include the Java Embedding plugin, which allow Mac OS X users to run Java applets with the latest 1.4 and 5.0 versions of Java (the default Java software shipped by Apple is not compatible with any browser, except its own Safari). Version 2.0 The code name for Mozilla Firefox 2.0 was Bon Echo, but for the official Beta 1 release it was branded with the Firefox 2 name. It still retains the Bon Echo name for the unofficial builds. "Bon Echo", like other Firefox development names, is the name of a public park: Bon Echo Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada. The first alpha version (2.0a1) was released on March 21, 2006, the second alpha version (2.0a2) was released on May 12, 2006, and the third alpha version (2.0a3) was released on May 27, 2006. The first beta version (2.0b1) was released on July 12, 2006, and the second beta (2.0b2) shipped on August 31, 2006. The first release candidate was released on September 26, 2006. The second release candidate was released on October 6, 2006. A third release candidate (RC3) was released on October 16, 2006, The final release is scheduled to be issued at 6:00 pm PDT of Tuesday, October 24, 2006, according to www.spreadfirefox.com. However, as of October 23, 2006, Firefox 2 is already available on Mozilla servers; the official Firefox page has not yet been updated. Some of the new features that the Mozilla Firefox 2 browser will bring are: • New Windows installer using the Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS)
As of version 2.0 beta 2, the "Preferences" dialog has been redesigned for usability. Settings have been rearranged between tabs. In the Linux version, the traditional OK/Cancel button pair has been replaced with a single close button, GNOME-style, while in the Windows version, the old buttons have been preserved; this behavior can be customized in either version via the hidden browser.preferences.instantApply option. Version 3.0 The development name for Mozilla Firefox 3.0 is Gran Paradiso. The precursory releases are currently codenamed "Minefield", as this is the name of the trunk releases. "Gran Paradiso", like other Firefox development names, is an actual place. "Gran Paradiso" is the name of a national park in Italy. When Firefox 3.0 branches, it will adopt the "Gran Paradiso" codename. The release timeframe for Firefox 3.0 is first quarter 2007. The largest change for Firefox 3 will be the implementation of Gecko 1.9, an updated layout engine. It will also include several new features and some that were bumped from Firefox 2, such as the overhauled Places system for storing bookmarks and history in an SQL backend. Due to Microsoft's decision to end support for Windows 98 and Windows Me on July 11, 2006, and because Cairo does not support Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, and Windows NT 4.0, Firefox 3.0 will not run on those operating systems. Unlike previous versions, Firefox 3 on Mac OS X will be written in Cocoa. The development team is also asking that Firefox users submit feature requests that they wish to be included in Firefox 3. Mozilla Firefox 3 is not listed for download on the Mozilla website, but may be downloaded from Mozilla's FTP site. Version 4.0 On October 13, 2006, Brendan Eich, Mozilla's Chief Technology Officer, wrote about the plans for Mozilla 2.0, the platform on which Firefox 4 is likely to be based. These changes include improving and removing XPCOM APIs, switching to standard C++ features, just-in-time compilation with JavaScript 2, and tool-time and runtime security checks. History |
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